Winning Code
Want to get in on Austin's booming tech scene? Here's how.
With a fast-growing tech scene; outposts of established tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Apple; and a dynamic tech community, Austin has established itself as a tech hub with a rapidly growing jobs market.
This growth, according to the Computing Technology Industry Association’s (CompTIA) Cyberstates 2019 report, created 52,373 new tech jobs in 2018, up 76 percent from the year prior.
In addition to the growth in tech jobs, positions directly related to software engineering and data science drove growth in the top two leading tech occupations in Austin: software/web developers (+5.8 percent year over year) and computer systems analysts (+5.4 percent year over year). More noticeably, the salaries attached to these positions ranked 96 percent higher than the median wages for the rest of Texas, coming in at a median salary of $86,459. Yeah, read that number again.
Coding and UX/UI design bootcamps, like WeWork's Flatiron School, assist Austinites in capitalizing on these job opportunities and high salaries. These small, technical programs prepare people with little to no experience to land entry-level technical roles. Flatiron School, at WeWork's Westview location, specializes in training its students in software engineering and UX/UI design.
Kelsey, an online Flatiron School grad, first encountered code as a junior in college. Though interested, she didn't pursue programming because there weren't many women in her class. Lacking female role models in her coding community, she switched directions to healthcare. After graduating from Flatiron, Kelsey landed a job as a technical support engineer at Pingboard Org Chart Software in Austin. Now she enjoys building products and the opportunity to be the role model she needed years ago.
Kelsey's story, plus the many others from Flatiron School, illuminate the opportunity in Austin's growing tech workforce. With further growth predicted for technical positions in Austin, entities like Flatiron School offer greater accessibility to 21st-century skills through a variety of offerings, including income share agreements.
Lauren Bauml, campus director at Flatiron School Austin, explains: "With the Flatiron School Income Share Agreement, we invest in your success and make your career change more accessible."
The Flatiron School Income Share Agreement (ISA) aligns tuition payments with post-program income. If a student does not earn at least the minimum income outlined by the ISA, he or she does not pay tuition (see details).
Interested in learning more about Flatiron School? Sign up for Flatiron School's UX/UI design info session on June 20 or its software engineering info session on June 26, both hosted at WeWork Westview in downtown Austin.
Flatiron School is a global school that specializes in teaching tech skills like software engineering, data science, and UX/UI design, both on campus and online. Since 2012, Flatiron School has helped thousands of people change their careers and their lives by offering an alternative education model focused on training people on the most in-demand tech skills of today, to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.